Notes on How to achieve the Welfare State in the twenty-first century

1I still find it hard to understand why Roberto Kozulj suggested I write a foreword to his book How to achieve the Welfare State in the twenty-first century. Although I got a Ph.D. in Economics, I did so at a time when Keynes was just beginning to appear in the study programs. My later conversion into the political sciences definitely kept me away from economic thought, though I have always been interested in its core predicaments and topics: development processes, income distribution or the tensions of capitalism. I naturally do not have the knowledge or formal background to suggest a critique of this book from the point of view of an expert. I will then simply offer some comments from the comfortable position of the intellectual who is not a specialist in the social sciences.

2I can say I have had the privilege of reading an extremely valuable work. Indeed, I found myself unexpectedly immersed in the depths of macroeconomic analysis from a historical perspective. The text also meant a significant insight into a subject that my weak formal background had not provided me with. And it was also a privilege for the pleasure I took in reading a text that is faithful to the best traditions of classical political economy: sound erudition, clear and elegant language, riveting images, permanent use of metaphors and comparisons as a strategy to clarify complex issues.

3The central thesis of the book could probably have been stated in the length of a single article. A few paragraphs would even have been enough to express the main argument: the link between urbanization and growth is crucial to understand the dynamics of the economy from a macro historical perspective. Following this view, different stages of the urbanization process produce varied impacts on growth, business cycles and wealth distribution. Over the last 70 years, capitalism has moved in the direction of a dynamics that tends to reduce the sources of job creation. The problem can then be considerably mitigated by means of reurbanization, that is, tasks meant to maintain the quality of urban infrastructure.

4The text offers, then, a series of policy guidelines suggesting sustainable reurbanization as a planned implementation of Schumpeterian creative destruction. If urbanization processes have been mainly a product in themselves, with a very long life cycle, sustainable reurbanization could become a powerful mechanism of job creation. This would produce a new long cycle of activities more along the lines of what the workforce can do on a world scale.

5In a way, Kozulj’s thesis offers a partial answer to the question posed in my book Merecer la ciudad: los pobres y el derecho al espacio urbano. Migration processes have triggered the growth of slums in large cities, which has not only affected the quality of those cities but has also forced the people living there to lead miserable life styles. Governments, in turn, have decided in favor of compulsory exclusion or housing solutions which are always precarious and inadequate. Nothing has been done, at the same time, to solve the problem of the growing unemployment affecting those sectors of the population. Thus, the growth of the urban poor has been the consequence of a structural process deriving from urbanization involving the creation of wealth as flow (GDP) along a stage of modernization. In view of existing structural unemployment, Kozulj suggests that the human capital that built the cities be employed once that stage is over. That would permit the payment of a belated social debt in favor of those who migrated to the cities, and would prevent future generations from having their right to work restricted. For that is what the book is about: protecting the right to work by linking employment to the creation of sustainable cities, which would then reverse their continued deterioration.

6Fortunately, Kozulj chose the thorny road to develop his thesis, rather than that of the roses, which would have saved him the trouble of writing hundreds of pages. He chose to review the important questions that the top thinkers of economic sciences have posed so far. And in so doing, he kept bringing up his central thesis over and over again, thus rendering it more valuable and plausible. And he also offered a comprehensive perspective on the key predicaments and challenges that achieving the Welfare State implies, as well as on the sharp controversy aroused by the analysis of the likely paths to achieve it in our present context.

7From a conceptual perspective, the author reviews and updates the meaning of analytical categories that might seem obvious, such as wealth, modernization, urbanization or economic growth. And in order to examine his central thesis, he deals with topics such as the development process trends since the Industrial Revolution to the present day, also describing the role of technological innovation. Some of the variables he considers relevant for his analysis are the dynamics of population and environmental damage, industrialization and employment processes, the Welfare State and consumption patterns in our present world context. Dozens of charts, figures and statistical tables illustrate the analysis and confirm his hypotheses and interpretations.

8Summing up, then, I consider that this book is an important contribution to academic discussions on the Welfare State and the ways to achieve it. With persuasive arguments, the author offers a deep insight into the topic from a multifaceted approach, revealing infrequent erudition and analytical capacity.